A suicide mission – a task which is so dangerous for the people involved that they are not expected to survive. Risks involved with suicide missions are not always obvious to those who participate in them. Special Forces are often on missions such as these, hoping their superior training will allow them to be successful. But this wasn’t the mind set of Navy Seals Matthew Axelson, Michael Murphy, Danny Dietz, and Marcus Luttrell. However, for Marcus Luttrell it wasn’t a suicide mission because he, the Lone Survivor, lived through this nightmare. My Name is Analise Sylvester and I’m going to tell you about a man named Marcus Luttrell and the rest of seal team 10 who were chosen for this type of mission.

A Texan through and through is what he would tell you. Luttrell has an identical twin brother named Morgan, both towering at 6’5, 230 pounds and both are Navy Seals. They began preparing for their rough adult lives since boys, growing up in a tough Texan landscape shooting animals and tin cans, and wrestling twelve foot alligators in the water as a favorite pass time. At the age of fourteen the brothers knew it took someone special to become part of any special force team, so they asked a neighbor named Billy Shelton, an ex Green Beret to help them physically prepare and to this day they’re still terrified of him. So by the time Marcus joined the Navy he was well prepared. Luttrell is an easy going person, just an average guy similar to you and me, this he was well aware of.
Some years had passed since Luttrell had become a Seal. Little did he know that in June 2005 he was about to be a part of the largest loss of life in Navy Seal history in a single day. A total of nineteen SEALS had died, between three of the original Operation Red Wing men and the 16 others who rushed to their friends desperate plead for assistance in Northern Afghanistan. Missing and believed to be dead by the media and rest of the world, discluding his brother and people who knew him best, Luttrell was missing with three cracked vertebrate, a shredded face, had been shot, blown up and who had fought beside his best buddies Mike, Danny, and Axel until their slow deaths one by one in their ultimate sacrifice for their country. A tribute to his fallen comrades, Luttrell tells a complete story of his journey of becoming a SEAL and then through the grueling events during Operation Red Wing until his rescue a week later by other U.S Special Forces.

One an honor graduate from Penn State who played hockey and was accepted by several law schools, these men could have been the next top lawyers or have done anything with their lives, but they chose to join the U.S armed forces because unlike everyone else, the SEALs answer to a higher calling other than their own. These men had walked the same campuses some of our class will be walking next year, doing the same things, striving to better ourselves. But only a special breed of man can partake in what it takes to be a SEAL, men that make the United States everything that it is.
This book isn’t written for people just into the military or for social studies teachers, it’s written for every American with a heart. Nothing is left out and no feelings are spared. Straight forward without the sugar coating it is expertly written with the help of Patrick Robinson who has written many military novels. Honor these men by reading this book. These men are our protectors, our shepherds. Because we don’t see or know all of what they do in foreign lands, they are disregarded and shoved out of our minds while we take our luxuries as if they are our rights while our sons are the ones making it possible for us to have these plans. The connection I made to this book is a connection we all can make, because we are all the same. Americans fighting the same fight, making our dreams become realities with the help of our silent guardians, our men in this book.